01/05/2023
The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and the Post-war Population–Resource Crises
Summary
The Return of Malthus is the first comprehensive analysis of the post-war fear of scarcity. Linnér traces the development of an international discourse of crisis through the influence of such thinkers as William Vogt, Fairfield Osborn and Georg Börgström, labelled ‘neo-Malthusians’ for their emphasis on an impending clash between population growth and resource limits, after the manner of the nineteenth-century father of scarcity economics. The book analyses the role of science and technology in securing food supply, the transmutation of older ideas about preserving nature into a new conservation ideology based on sustainable use, and the preoccupation of the industrialised nations with forestalling communism and controlling power relations.
Citation
Linnér, B.-O. (2023). The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-war Population–Resource Crises. White Horse Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.2225683
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